To think that if a competition is hosted by Mumsnet the prize should be accessible to people with children?

I just clicked on a competition link. It looks wonderful, a Mark Warner holiday in a 5* hotel in Greece.Just before I clicked to submit it I looked at the Ts and Cs.You have to take the prize this summer. If your children are older than 11 you have to pay more andExcluded departure dates; 25th May, 27th July ? 30th AugustSo you can't travel in school holidays.Not much use to a large percentage of MN then

Going to go against the grain and say YANBU. It is true that lots of people here don't have school age children. But there are lots of threads here about how expensive holidays are in school holidays. And loads of debates about whether you should take your kids out of school for a term time holiday.

So it would be a really nice and generous if companies offering prize included the school holidays.

As it is more expensive the prize could be either a free holiday in term time or the equivalent money towards a holiday in the school holidays.

Well I didn't enter it. It just seems a bit disingenuous to promote a fabulous holiday on a parenting website which excludes many (I never said all) of it's target market from being able to take the prize. It's a form of advertising after all and could be counter productive if it annoys those it is meant to attract.

I can see OP's point, though. Mark Warner aren't donating the prize out of the goodness of their hearts; they want the opportunity to market specifically to Mumsnet's demographic of (largely) families with at least one school age child (would need to check the MN census figures to be certain of that 'largely', admittedly). So they should suck it up and actually give a prize that can be used by the people they are trying to market at.

As drjohnsonscat says, it actually puts me off Mark Warner a bit so it may be something of a false economy in their marketing budget.